How stylish are you?

How do you name your style sheets, those of you who bother to use them at all? Below are some of the most common style names I use for book work, which are cribbed from various sources. I use these same abbreviations to key manuscripts on those rare occasions when I’m copyediting text for someone else to typeset.

Warning: This is supernerdy. Do not click “more” unless you are prepared to be bored out of your skull.

General principles

• Names are case sensitive: paragraph styles in caps, character styles in lowercase. This makes them easier to distinguish at a glance, when using Quick Apply (or whatever it’s called) in InDesign, or when working with XpressTags.
• Names are as short as possible, again, to make them easy to call up using Quick Apply, but also because when I’m styling text in Word, it’s sometimes faster to type the style name in the style selection box rather than to click it on a menu. Word will not jump to the nearest style on the list; you must type the whole name.

Paragraph styles

TNI

Text, no indent. This is usually the style on which I base everything else.

TX

Text. TNI with whatever my first-line indent is, usually 1p or 1p6.

TXS, STX, STNI, TNIS, STNIS

Text with or without a first-line indent, with a one-line space before or after, used around distinct elements such as block quotes. This is sort of a little-endian, big-endian issue, in that some typesetters prefer to include the space in the stylesheet for the thing that’s being surrounded, instead. So, instead of TXS->EXTNI->STX, they would have something like TX->SEXTNIS->TX. I used to use the latter method, until a colleague pointed out that it requires many more styles than the former convention.

EXT, EXTNI

Extracts, with and without a first-line indent. The same as TNI, but usually with an indent left and right of the same size as the first-line indent on TX. Occasionally I’ll make the extract text a point smaller than the body text or use a different typeface, but usually I think the indents are enough to set these off from the text.

BL

Bulleted list. I like the bullet flush to the margin and the list text indented to match the first-line indent on TX.

A, B, C, D, etc.

Headings, with A being the top level.

NL

Numbered list. Typically cleared for 10s, with a 3pt gutter between numeral or period and the list text.

FN

Footnote. Smaller than body text, usually with ¾ the amount of leading. Numerals are usually cleared for 10s, not superscript, and I prefer not to have a period after the number. Half-point rule above the first note on a page, at whatever length looks good (usually something like 4p).

EN

Endnote. Same as footnotes, more or less.

CN, CT

Chapter number, chapter title. Some books have one or the other; some have both.

C1

The first paragraph of a chapter, which may have a drop cap, small caps for the first few words, or some other embellishment.

PN, PT

Part number, part title. Some books have one or the other; some have both. The top item, whatever it may be, is usually set to begin on the next recto page.

EPI

Epigraph. Sometimes these occur only in the front; sometimes they’re on part openers; sometimes they’re on every chapter; may need more than one version (e.g., “P EPI,” “C EPI”).

EPI SRC

Epigraph source. Often flush right, spaced even small caps.

TX tight 1, TX tight 2, TX tight 3, TX tight 3 98, TX loose 1, TX loose 2

Variants of TX with different H&Js, for copyfitting. These were essential when I had to work in Quark XPress, because it fits text so stupidly. In InDesign I usually have to make only one tight style, and I loosen paragraphs by forcing a line break; ID cleans up the spacing for me. The “TX tight 3 98″ was my way of approximating InDesign’s ability to scale glyphs ever so slightly to fit copy. I’d make a character style that was scaled to 98 percent of the normal width and then attach it to a set of very tight H&Js. Type designers will detest me for this, I’m sure, but this style usually looks better than the “TX tight 3″ by itself. Trust me. I have also, in cases of dire copyfitting emergency, created a style called “TX perilously tight.”

ORN

Ornament, for section breaks. Typically centered, with a full blank line above and below.

SBTX, SBTNI

Sidebar text, with or without a first-line indent. Usually a different typeface, e.g., sans serif, and sometimes with different leading. Sidebars do not necessarily appear on the side of the page; they might be in the same text block, but set off with rules or screens or whatever. If possible, I make styles that include the necessary rule or screen (a screen sometimes being effected by using a very wide, screened rule).

COPY, COPYS

Copyright page text.

V, VS

Verse, and the same with a blank line after. I used to use Jack M. Lyon‘s much more granular method—

• Poem First NI
• Poem Middle
• Poem Middle NI
• Poem Middle
• Poem Middle NI
• Poem End
• Poem Start NI
• Poem Middle
• Poem Middle NI
• Poem Middle
• Poem Middle NI
• Poem Last

Styling the poem in this way allows you to use different leading before the poem, between lines, between stanzas, and after the poem, and it also allows you to adjust the indentation for each kind of line, or even to use no indentation.¹

until I decided that it was overkill. Occasionally I will use half-line spaces between stanzas instead of full lines, but since I prefer to keep everything on a grid, this is extremely rare. And unless I’m working with a stack of poems that all have a similar indent scheme (also extremely rare), I use tabs, spaces, and margin adjustments to move lines and words where they need to be. So, sue me.

Character styles

tx it

Italicized body text. I specify that it’s the text italic, because sometimes I’ll also need to set up “ext it,” “ct it,” “pt it,” and the like.

sc

Small caps in body text. Always with a bit of track.

fn ref, en ref

Footnote/endnote reference. The number in the main text that refers the reader to a note. Superscript, lining figs instead of old style if possible.

drop cap

I don’t use these a lot.

leadin

For example, the first three words of a chapter, if they’re in a different typeface. Should be “lead-in,” but Quark XPress does some horrible thing to style names that contain hyphens, IIRC. Sometimes I’ll make lead-ins for specific purposes, such as “BL leadin.”

bullet

If I’m doing something besides an option-8 for my bulleted list (which I usually am).

tx 98

Body text scaled to 98 percent of normal width. This is a copyfitting hack I used to have to use all the time in Quark, as explained above, under “TX tight 1, etc.”

a, b, c, d, ct, cn, ext, tx, etc.

If I’m working in Quark XPress, everything has its own character style. I don’t allow “Normal”-anything in my Quark documents, even on the pasteboard. Because if I do, XPress drives me abso-fucking-lutely crazy, cascading changes through the whole document when I least expect it. I’m sure Those People who actually like XPress have some other way of preventing such disruptive behavior, but this is what works for me. (Though I find that not using Quark in the first place works even better.)

Those are all the styles I use most often, I believe, but some documents will have many, many, many more; it just depends on the complexity of the text. Except in frontmatter, I create a style for everything. Because why? Because I am profoundly lazy. If there is one thing I hate doing more than mindlessly selecting, clicking, selecting, clicking, selecting, clicking, a hundred times, it’s repeating these motions another hundred times, because I need to change the size or typeface or whatever. So I set up basic styles as soon as I create a new document. To save time, I often use an existing layout as a template, and then just change the typefaces, spacing, and H&Js to suit. Because I use a consistent array of styles, the dependencies between them will nearly always be the same, from book to book, so why set them up from scratch?

So. Anybody have a different method? Care to explain it?

[Crickets.]

Photo: Woman putting on her lipstick in a park with Union Station behind her, Washington, D.C. [ca. 1943]. From the Library of Congress Flickr collection. No known copyright restrictions.